


While Collecting the Stars, A Prologue

by TheDragonofHouseMormont



Series: while collecting the stars [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 18:29:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5881162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDragonofHouseMormont/pseuds/TheDragonofHouseMormont
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He walked into a diner and told a supposed complete stranger the kind of secrets he wouldn’t tell anyone.  Except for one person, and that person had been her all along."</p><p>A necessary prologue to the series While Collecting the Stars, detailing the return of the Doctor's memories after Hell Bent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While Collecting the Stars, A Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "Jupiter" by Sleeping at Last.

[[Playlist](http://8tracks.com/gwendolynnby/and-in-our-travels)] [[Photoset](http://gwendolynnby.tumblr.com/post/138370346912/post-hell-bent-clara-and-the-doctor-travel-the)]

It was like waking up.  When he stepped into the diner and saw her, it was like grasping on to the wispy tendrils of a dream as it slid through his fingers.  In hindsight, he should have known exactly who she was, and not a day goes by that he doesn’t try to imagine what would have happened if he had been a little smarter.  Sometimes he thinks he’d be honest with her, no pretense, or he would simply lean in and kiss her.  Then sometimes he remembers that if he had done either of those things, the end result would be time fracturing.

But that doesn’t change the fact that he should have known.  He walked into a diner and told a supposed complete stranger the kind of secrets he wouldn’t tell anyone.  Except for one person, and that person had been her all along.  He knew instantly when the diner disappeared around him; it wasn’t subtle.  The painting of her on his Tardis only confirmed his guess.  He always saw her, always knew her, even when he didn’t.

For a Gallifreyan device, the neural block wasn’t working as well as they had expected.  Since the diner he would see flashes of her in his dreams or memories would come flooding back to him mid-adventure.  He supposes the neural block was never designed for the Hybrid, never built to keep apart two people so set on staying together that they put the universe at risk.  There was no way he could forget her, not really.  Even when the memories were difficult to hold clearly in his mind, he still knew her in his hearts, still remembered her smile, still knew exactly what she meant to him.

The first time he found one of her letters was on a planet so far out in orbit from its star that it was almost always night time.  He likes the night, likes the view of the sky the darkness affords him.  As he walked through a field and back into town, his own words echoed back on him, like from out of a dream.  “ _The deep and lovely dark.  We’d never see the stars without it.”_ The letter was waiting for him in town, an abandoned piece of paper near the window on the bar of a café.  He saw it through the window, the small folded up paper, and curiosity got the best of him.

Just as she knew it would.

His hearts nearly stopped beating when he recognized the handwriting.  The letter was almost a confession, an apology made in the act of doing wrong.  She had been there moments before and seen him and only just managed to rein in her self-control long enough to not approach him.  But still she wrote the letter, laid out like a puzzle piece in a way that was impersonal enough that she could try to assure her own conscience.  But she knew what she was doing and she knew him well enough to know that the letter would make its way to him.

And from there it launches like a new adventure.  They leave letters for each other everywhere, scattered throughout time and space.  But this time instead of echoes or memories, they’re stones slowly building a path that both hope they will have the courage to never walk down.

They leave the notes in public places, on busy streets where the letter might be stepped on by several strangers and always overlooked until it is inevitably discovered by its receiver, or tucked away in hiding places no one would ever think to look but them.  Perhaps it’s because thoughts and emotions are easier to articulate on the written page, when the person you’re speaking with is not immediately in front of you.  Perhaps it’s because, after all they’ve been through and all the time that has passed, they no longer see the need to keep secrets, to pretend that what they feel is anything but overwhelming.

Time passes, but they only grow and change with it, marking the seasons with ink on a page.  And every letter they write is always found.  Every single one.

**Author's Note:**

> I currently have two fics planned for this series. The first will be the letters that they send (the first letter has already been posted) and the second will be a murder mystery reunion.


End file.
